He Who Wields The Knife (RPG All, Serpentine)

They’re having a leadership contest over in the UK, don’t know if you noticed. A couple of has-beens are racing to become captain of the Titanic. One, Rishi Sunak, is known to have been jockeying for position behind Boris Johnson’s back before the leadership contest even kicked off. That seems to have given his rival Liz Truss the advantage, under the old political cliché ‘He who wields the knife never wears the crown.’ 

Although the phrasing is Michael Heseltine’s – he who famously drove a stake through Maggie Thatcher’s political career – the sentiment is one for the ages. It’s a generally accepted truth in coups, revolutions, and Shakespearean tragedies that the people who kick off the shooting match by taking direct action at the leadership do not survive the weeks, months or years of chaos that follows. Either the powers that be retain control, in which event there are bloody reprisals, or the knife-wielder ends up everyone’s target in the ensuing melee. 

Oddly enough it’s a factor that you’ve seen play out yourself more than once, though you may not have realized it at the time. In every competitive game you’ve ever played there has always been a point where one player is clearly in the lead, at which point every other player joins forces to bring the leader down. Even those who clearly have no hope of winning themselves start cooperating with those who do, or might.

Of course, if you wield the knife you might at least be remembered, as Richard III has been remembered. Buried under a car park, mind you, but remembered nonetheless. Whether the annals of history matter to you while the worms gnaw your desiccated remains is a matter for conjecture.

Knife follows knife, more often than not. Julius Caesar famously crossed the Rubicon and defeated Pompey Magnus in civil war, only to die at the hands of men who themselves died on the battlefield.  Robespierre saw Louis XVI to the guillotine and himself ended up under the guillotine, but he was not the last so to die. 

In RPG settings there’s a lot to be gained from bloody revolution. It’s an excellent plot hook and motivates action. Of course, the characters are likely to be on the sidelines at first, perhaps hired by [INSERT NPC HERE] to be one of the Act 3 Scene 3 Murderers. Or perhaps something else, but whatever their actual role adventurers are used to being hired by someone else to Do A Thing.

If this were Night’s Black Agents, for example, it is definitely in keeping for the agents to be hired by [WHOEVER] to Destroy, Hit, Flip, Heist, or whatever it may be. They may not realize, or care, that they’re working for vampires, at least not at first. A job is a job, after all.

The problem comes when they’re forced to realize that it’s not just a job. That the Heist they were paid to take on was carried out in furtherance of someone else’s scheme. That the Nodes at Tier 2 of the pyramid are looking hungrily at the undead at Tier 1 and wondering if they have what it takes to overthrow the leadership. To become Caliph instead of the Caliph.

After all, if he who wields the knife seldom wears the crown, what do you think happens to the lackeys of he who wields the knife? Shakespeare doesn't even tell you what happens to the murderers in Macbeth. It probably isn't pleasant but if Shakespeare can't even be bothered to say 'dead in a ditch' - well, that's just rude.

An alternative which puts the players at the heart of the action is to have them being the ones actively seeking power. Cyberpunk 2020 or Cyberpunk RED has an obvious means of making this work: have the characters be important executives in a corporation. Probably a smallish one; not Arasaka, but maybe a weapons supplier or manufacturer. A corporation that might be bought out by one of its competitors. That way the characters have a honeypot to reach for: being the ones with all the shares when the white knight swoops in with cash in hand.

Swords of the Serpentine has a section in the early part of the book that talks about a similar group concept: the Family Business. I’m going to quote that section here:

You may be a prestigious member of the Ancient Nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back. This style of game deals with family politics and social pressure as much as external threats; you may have just slipped into a rival’s office to poison their wine, but is that going to make your mother proud of you?

In Serpentine the Noble Houses can be powerful, influential, wealthy – but it’s just as likely that they’re decayed husks of their former glory. Yes, they have property and titles, but no, they have nothing of actual value. Plenty of glory, and no bread to eat.

With that in mind:

The Gritti Saga

The characters are either members of the family proper, or part of the mansion staff. Perhaps they even hold a meaningless title – Keeper of the Falcons, when there hasn’t been a bird in the coop for decades. Or Nanny, in a house with no babies. The Grittis have a splendid history and plenty of property deeds for houses and ships that either no longer exist or are well out of reach. A squatter’s haven in Sag Harbor that used to be a Gritti shipbuilder, or concession rights to a particular business that has long since been carved up by rivals who care not a snap for rights on paper when they have the rights in practice.

At the top of this tree is Tomaso Gritti, your beloved … well, perhaps not so beloved. The characters have all sorts of ideas about how to revitalize the Gritti line. They may have allies, loyal servants and the like. 

What they don’t have is power. Tomaso is the one in charge and he will brook no defiance. Nor does he care very much for whatever scheme the characters have come up with. Why revitalize the house of Gritti? What need is there? Gritti is magnificent and needs no modification. Gritti shall be as it has always been - so long as Tomaso is in charge. 

If the players are to achieve greatness one of them has to wield the knife. Which one will it be? 

What will happen after Tomaso falls?  

God Save The What Now? (Politics - Barbados)

This week's post is partly inspired by recent events in Barbados, as encapsulated in this TL/DR video:

Now, this isn't the only bit of media I've seen bewailing the fate of the Monarchy and wondering what will happen when the Queen finally goes to her well-deserved rest. However as someone born in a colony and who's lived in the Commonwealth nearly all of his life, I thought it might be time to lay some myths to rest.

1) Never forget, she is who she is. Nobody swears allegiance to the Monarchy in the abstract. Yes, Queen Elizabeth II is popular but that's because she takes service to the nation seriously and people respect her for it. If she'd been a different kind of monarch we wouldn't be having this discussion and probably there'd be no Commonwealth. There's a reason why PM Owen Arthur (c. 7.54) said he'd struggle to swear allegiance to Harry; this is it.

2) She came here, and we remember. Early in her reign she travelled the Commonwealth and there are plenty of plaques all over the place to mark the spots she's visited, which is another mark in her favor for those who remember the visits. Problem being, the ones who do are in their eighties, so the public memory's fading. The rest of the family don't seem to travel as much; Charles does, but he's no spring chicken. See also: the Pope. There's a reason why His Holiness gets on a plane and jets off to wherever-it-may-be, and it's not because he's racking up frequent flier miles for that dream holiday to Aruba. The personal touch matters. It keeps people engaged.

3) We don't read the Sun. The British have a very different view of the Monarchy than the Commonwealth does, and that's because the average Englishman's concept of the Crown's been shaped by God alone knows how many newspaper articles, paparazzi shots, TV shorts and a thousand other things besides - most of which we never saw. The big change in the Crown's popularity in the UK came in the 1980s and 1990s, when the media became far less deferential and Spitting Image clowned around. As far as the Commonwealth's concerned, none of that ever happened; it wasn't on our TV or in our papers. We don't even get the BBC, for crying out loud, and that seems a missed opportunity. We'd probably pay a license fee for it, if asked. [possible exceptions: Canada and Australia, which both seem to get more UK media than the rest of us.] In fact until the Internet became everyone's media source of choice we only ever got the Crown's highlight reel, and that rarely. Now we get YouTube vids every time Meghan Markle farts. That changes things, but it still means the Commonwealth doesn't share the same perspective the British do.

4) We need a loud voice. The Commonwealth is made up of small nations, for the most part. When small nations try to strike a bargain with larger powers - and everyone's a larger power - we get squeezed. So there's a very useful benefit to being part of a larger Commonwealth of Nations with the Crown at its head, one worth preserving. However, see also Brexit; the less relevant the UK becomes, the less useful our relationship with the Crown. See also see also CARICOM. If the Crown isn't our voice of choice, we'll invent our own. Bermuda's an associate member, and frankly that's only because we're still a dependent territory of the UK which means all our foreign policy is controlled by London. If we ever vote for independence I expect our full membership of CARICOM will follow five minutes after we formally go independent.

5) The prosperous middle classes. Stop me if you've heard these acronyms before: RICS. ICSA (now the CGI). CIOB. CIPD. CIAT. RIBA. RIN (remember, we're surrounded by lots and lots of ocean). And so on ad infinitum. If you're a lawyer, accountant, administrator, architect, engineer and so forth, and you live and work in the Commonwealth, odds are you belong to one of the many Royal or Chartered Institutes, not least because our legal systems are based on the UK's. That means you probably spent several years in the UK or at the very least went there for a crammer course to pass your exams. Your Chartered Body's HQ is almost certainly in London. If you have legal training, odds are good you've eaten at least one dinner at the Inns of Court. The Institutes have done more to keep the Commonwealth a Commonwealth than anything the Queen could manage if she lives to be two hundred, because they provide shared experiences, shared standards, and most importantly drive tens of thousands of students to that sodden, pestilent isle every year.  Even if a Commonwealth nation decides to throw off the yoke and completely reshape the government, the people who do the reshaping will have been trained in the UK to a UK standard - there's no escaping that influence.

And finally:

6) Brexit and Racists. There are plenty of reasons why a Commonwealth made up largely of non-white citizens might not be madly in love with the UK right now, and they have nothing to do with the Queen. Remember earlier when I mentioned the Internet as a news source? Yeah, turns out we know all about Bojo's racism. We notice when former English Defense League head honcho Tommy Robinson gets BBC coverage. When I was a kid having an English passport meant a gateway to a world of possibilities; post-Brexit, an English passport means a narrow lane to a grey failed state where frothing fisherman and mountains of slaughtered pigs are the new symbols of sovereignty. The Queen's death might provide a convenient excuse to cut formal ties, but let's not kid ourselves; those ties have been fraying for a long, long time and most of the reasons why have nothing to do with the Monarchy. 

Anyway, that's it for me. Normal service will resume next week!

Fellow Travellers

This post is going to discuss some plot points in BioShock Infinite. There will be spoilers, and while I will try to avoid major plot reveals, you should bear in mind that there may be some; if you can't abide 'em, then now's the time to stop reading.

On with the show!

One of the main political groups Booker discovers in Columbia is the Vox Populi, a rag-tag bunch of rebels in desperate need of guns. He agrees to help them, in exchange for a favor, an act that causes his companion Elizabeth some concern. Is helping the Vox Populi the right thing to do? Will they be just like the heroes of Les Miserables - a rather melancholy end for them, of course, but death in a good cause can only be heroic - and make things better for the people?

Which goes to show that French literature, no matter how masterful, can't be trusted when it comes to describing revolutions. As a general rule, successful revolts tend to go something like this:

A: These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd.
O: Your brother, too, must die; consent you, Lepidus?
L: I do consent ...
O: Prick him down, Antony.
L: Upon condition Publius shall not live,
     Who is your sister's son, Mark Antony.
A: He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
     But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar's house; 
     Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
    How to cut off some charge in legacies.
L: What, shall I find you here?
O: Or in the Capitol.
exit L
A: This is a slight, unmeritable man,
     Meet to be sent on errands; is it fit,
     The three-fold world divided, he should stand,
     One of the three to share it?

This is what a successful revolt looks like, and has looked like ever since man first started building cities. An unsuccessful revolt looks something like this:

D: Shall no man else be touched, but only Caesar?
C: Decius, well urged: I think it is not meet,
     Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,
     Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him 
     A shrewd contriver; and, you know, his means,
     If he improve them, may well stretch so far
    As to annoy us all; which to prevent,
    Let Antony and Caesar fall together.
B: Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, 
     To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
     Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
     For Antony is but a limb of Caesar:
     Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.

It is a pattern that repeats itself, time and again. When Richard of Gloucester finally has the throne of England in his grasp, after hard and bloody campaigning, his first act is to silence his brother's Woodeville relations, who are accused - whether accurately or not is impossible to say - of plotting against Richard's life. Shortly afterward, Richard's brother's children go conveniently missing, and the fate of the princes in the Tower has never been conclusively proved. Not long after that, Richard himself ends up dead at Bosworth field, only to have his bones excavated under a car park, of all things. The socialists who followed Marx and Lenin, and overthrew the Tsar, did so out of the highest motives; "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a noble sentiment, but soon snuffed out. Come the mid-1920s, many of those who follow Marxist ideals are under suspicion, in exile, or dead; when Stalin consolidates his power, the age of assassination and condemnation begins. "The French give a man rum before they lead him out to the guillotine," said Mikhail Koltsov, Stalin's man in Spain during the Civil War, "In these days we give him champagne." Koltsov was a man with few illusions; he too died, a victim of Stalin's bloodlust.

A rebellion that succeeds does so because it consolidates power quickly and decisively. Time and again, that has meant killing off your political enemies as quickly as possible. Even the United States, much more fortunate in this regard, has its Whiskey Rebellion, and victory for Washington and the rebels meant disaster for the Loyalists, tens of thousands of whom emigrated. But that is a rare example of a revolution that consolidates itself without excess bloodshed. Regrettably many rebel leaders more closely resemble Pol Pot than Washington and, as the CIA has sometimes learned to its cost, the rebels you support today may be your enemy tomorrow.

Even so, it is rare, in a modern fictional context, for rebels to be portrayed in a bad light. Instead it is almost axiomatic that the rebels are the good guys, and - particularly in a video game - if you join the rebels, you must be fighting on the side of the angels. It is very, very uncommon for that not to be the case, and even on the occasions when the rebels turn out to have feet of clay, they still get something like a noble exit. After all, the rebellion isn't to be blamed for the actions of a few bad apples, and if you can only kill the right people at the right time, justice will assuredly prevail. In BioShock context, the Vox Populi soon reveal themselves as being less heroic than the protagonists of Les Miserables, which is altogether a more realistic view of revolutions than video games normally give.

In an RPG context, particularly as relates to Trail of Cthulhu, what does this mean?

To begin with, the protagonists in your campaign may well believe - as Elizabeth initially believes, and as many intellectuals of the 1930s rationalize it - that revolution is the necessary first step that will lead to a utopia. There are any number of political revolts kicking off, or threatening to kick off, in the decade, many of them inspired by events in Russia. Spain's Civil War is the classic, the one that inspired Orwell first to fight, and later to create his seminal work of revolutionary fiction. Across Europe there are groups dedicated to the cause of working class revolution. Central and Southern America are still smouldering after a tumultuous nineteenth century, Ghandi is fasting and avoiding assassination in India, nationalism is bubbling away in Africa, while in America Roosevelt is dealing with unprecedented poverty by making an unprecedented move to the political Left. Everyone believes revolution is coming, and that the people they most dislike are "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." If you believe that revolution is a bad thing, then clearly you must be a member of the bourgeoisie, and therefore thoroughly deserve what's coming to you.

Next comes disillusion. As Orwell demonstrates, there is nothing more likely to induce a violent dislike of revolution than seeing one close up. There will be the pricking of lists, the poisonous umbrellas, torture, unjust imprisonment, and betrayal both of people and of the revolutionary ideal. Your former comrades quickly become your worst enemies; indeed, they have to, even if they would prefer otherwise, since to defend you means being denounced in turn. Or perhaps they have internalized the party message to such a degree that to think otherwise is beyond them.

"It would be impossible for me," wrote Orwell, "for instance, to debate the rights and wrongs of the Barcelona fighting with a Communist Party member, because no Communist - that is to say, no 'good' Communist - could admit that I have given a truthful account of the facts. If he followed his party line dutifully he would have to declare that I am lying or, at best, that I am hopelessly misled and that anyone who glanced at the Daily Worker headlines a thousand miles from the scene of events knows more of what was happening in Barcelona than I do."         

Fictions work best when they mirror reality. For that reason, the Vox Populi - and the revolt in general - in BioShock Infinite's Columbia will probably have a much greater effect on the video game playing audience than the hundred other rebellions their avatars may have joined in the past. In your RPG campaign, I would recommend you strive for something similar. In Trail, this could be reflected in something as simple as a Drive, Pillar of Sanity or Source of Stability. Perhaps this character genuinely believes in the worker's revolution, or their best friend and mentor is a champion of the downtrodden. Or, if the Keeper wants to go further, perhaps the game could be set in the context of an existing revolution, like Spain. Even in a less tumultuous setting, like Bookhounds of London, there's scope for revolutionary doings; the owner of a bookstore can easily be distributing political propaganda on the side, or attending meetings of a very dubious nature. No doubt the police, or the domestic intelligence services, would like a quiet word.    

The key thing to bear in mind is, in fiction, rebellions give players something to fight for. That's why video games use them so often; they're an excellent context for the ongoing action. But those games ignore the wider context of rebellion at their peril. "You just complicate the narrative," Booker is told, and that ought also to be true of your players. The revolution is by no means an unmixed blessing, and the protagonists may soon discover that what they thought they were fighting for is less substantial than, say, a castle in the clouds.